Nottingham theatre company Chronic Insanity has developed a strong reputation for theatre that plays at the edges of what being theatre means. That has led them to projects like All Falls Down: Sorroborough, which saw them adapt one of their shows from the VAULT Festival into a play-at-home English-langugae Jubensha and TTRPG theatre like Imprisoned with the Pharaohs, which bowed at the COLAB Tower last year.
Their latest is promising to continue that tradition of pushing the bounds of theatre, on an even grander scale.
Apple of Discord is set in the era of Greek Myth, at the wedding of Peleus and Thetis. Those who know the stories know this is the wedding that Eris, Goddess of Discord, was not invited to and which led her to crash the party with a very special gift in tow: a golden apple engraved with the word “Kallisti”: “to the fairest."
This sets off a scramble amongst the Goddesses which, domino like, leads to the Trojan War.
It’s fertile stuff for theatre, and in this case Chronic Insanity is parsing out the interactive action across five floors of Nottingham’s “People's Hall, complete with ornate staircases, historic cellars, and mysterious subterranean caves” and three hours that shapeshift formats across its runtime.
The show runs 30 March - 5 April, and we got Joe Strickland, Artistic Director of Chronic Insanity, to tell us more about this incredibly ambitious and very, very tempting show.
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NO PROSCENIUM: Tell us a little bit about your experience! What’s it about? What makes it immersive?
Joe Strickland: Apple of Discord is a multi-immersive experience that blends several different forms of immersive theatre together to create a tasting menu for what immersive theatre has to offer audiences, many of whom we anticipate will be coming to their first immersive experience. Our story is staged within a Grade II listed building in the heart of Nottingham City Centre, with the experience taking place over 5 floors and including over 30 artists and creatives. The story is inspired by Greek mythology and begins at a wedding between a God and a mortal that gets interrupted by an uninvited guest, torn apart, and then both the wedding guests and Olympus must try and pick up the pieces to move forwards
NP: What was the inspiration for your upcoming experience?
JS: We’ve been a company for over 6 years, and have made over 150 productions in that time, but they’ve often been small shows to smaller audiences. However, this has been due of lack of opportunity, not lack of ambition, and we’ve been talking to landlords and organisations about using bigger spaces since 2021, all to no avail.
When the People’s Hall, run by Nottingham Historic Building Trust, gave us the space we knew we had to create a big story to fit within this grand Georgian townhouse. We’ve wanted to do a large scale show for ages, so we concentrated our ideas down, pulled a cast and crew together, and got to work! We love large scale immersive shows and wanted to create something on that scale but for regional audiences who can’t justify the travel and expense of going to a show in London, especially if they’ve never tried immersive theatre before. We chose Greek mythology because it felt like a world both our cast and our audience would be familiar with, but still curious about, and keen to explore and immerse themselves in. Plus, there were so many overlapping stories with shared characters to be inspired by.
NP: What do you think fans of immersive will find most interesting about this latest experience?
JS: If you come and see our show you’ll be able to sample a whole range of immersive experience styles all under one roof. The wedding is a themed event, with a bar, cabaret, characters to talk to, and activities to take part in. Olympus is a promenade theatre performance, discovering scenes in different rooms throughout the house as you move silently through them. Plus, our notice board, oracles, and wedding planner have a variety of challenges and quests for guests to take part in if you want something even more active and interactive to do. If you love the whole breadth of what immersive theatre can be, and want to spend 3 hours fully experiencing the artform, then this is the show for you.
NP: Once you started designing and testing what did you discover about this experience that was unexpected?
JS: Two things are coming to mind. One is how completely and utterly relevant so much of Greek mythology is to our modern day. A story of the paradoxical nature of the power of the Gods being absolute over mortals, but only if the mortals believe in it, resonated with us hugely given the current state of the world.
Secondly, we were blown away by the appetite amongst local performers and designers to get involved in this sort of large scale immersive show. We’ve been mentioning that this would happen eventually to people for a couple of years, but when we actually started the call out to take part we were blown away by the support people had to give. Almost every major Nottingham art institution is offering support in one way or another, plus companies, like Nottingham Shakespeare Company and Tom Dale Dance Company, are creating unique performances for the show too. It was really heartening to prove to ourselves that immersive definitely has a future outside of London in the UK!
NP: What can fans who are coming to this, or thinking about coming to this, do to get into the mood of the experience?
JS: It’s difficult to say given the wide range of influences in the show. Aside from the immersive theatre of it all, we have sections that are contemporary dance, gig theatre, drag, or performance poetry. We have sections that are more like the Crystal Maze or Task Master, sections that are more surreal, abstract, and interpretive. We have one on ones and large scenes full of characters. We have a rave in a cave, and we have quiet table-top mini experiences. There is genuinely so much going on that to recommend any prep to get into the mood would skew you away from everything else happening in the show rather than focus you on something. We are designing the show for anyone to enjoy. Come as you are, we are ready for you however you arrive, and we will have a fun few hours for you no matter what!
Also, the show is set at a wedding, so if people want to dress up accordingly that would be fantastic!
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